He makes a point of visiting the sites of all of the battles and prisons about which he writes, aiming to transport his readers into the heart of a particular historical moment instead of just telling them about it.

"In order to educate, which is the primary mission of history, you have to entertain as well," he said.

Lukacs' new book, "Escape from Davao," tells the story of 10 American prisoners of war who escaped, with the help of two Filipino convicts, from a supposedly impenetrable Japanese POW camp. Lukacs' protagonists braved a treacherous journey home to tell their story of suffering at the hands of the Japanese. Now Lukacs hopes to tell that same story, in unprecedented detail, to a new audience over half a century later.

Lukacs will discuss his research and sign copies of his book at the Desert Ridge Barnes and Noble on Saturday.

He spoke about the book's unusual origin and the cultural role of the historian.

Question: The seed of the book came from your sportswriting research - is that right?

Answer: Right, yes. There was a gentleman by the name of Mario Tonelli, who was a football player at Notre Dame, which was my alma mater. And his story is incredible, and it was well known on campus . . . but it wasn't really known on a national scale. He lost his class ring on the Bataan Death March(a famously bloody forced relocation of American and Filipino prisoners of war in 1942), and a Japanese officer got his ring back to him.

This officer spoke perfect English and recognized Tonelli from his football-playing experience: this man had been in the stands the day that Tonelli scored the winning touchdown to beat USC in 1937 - the Japanese officer went to school in Southern California before the war. I wrote a feature story about it for USA Today and ended up meeting Tonelli. Through that story we developed a friendship, and during one of our many conversations he told me about this escape story, because he had been in that same prison camp when it had happened and he had known many of the participants. . . . He said, "Boy, if you like my story, this would be a great story to attack."

Q: What was the most difficult part of reporting the book?

A: Corroborating sources and digging up things that really weren't cleared up at the time. It happened during a time in the war when there was kind of a lull; there wasn't anything going on in terms of historic victories . . .

Since it was such a big story, everyone kind of ran with it. And back then, there wasn't a lot of fact-checking. A lot of newspapers didn't have research departments. I've read stories where they had people participating in the escape who weren't really there. That was the hard part, sifting through all that. Because by the time I got to the story and started working on it, it had basically had 65 years to simmer and cook, and all these discrepancies and errors had become part of the story.

Q: Why do you think our culture needs historians?

A: We need historians to remind us of how we got where we are right now and how certain things are written into our DNA . . . as Americans. I think this book is not just a war story but a great story about how Americans act. These guys had basically surrendered. They were thrown out and marooned, and nobody gave them much chance to get back. A lot of them just accepted it, but these guys said, 'No, we're not going to sit here and rot away. We're going to do something about that.' I think that's something in our national character, and it's stories like that that need to be continued.

Q: A lot of your research relied on old-fashioned oral history. How do you expect historians' jobs to change as more and more of our communication moves online?

A: As I was saying earlier, the book came about through a conversation: Tonelli said, "If you like my story, you should look at this story." It's interpersonal communication - it doesn't matter how it happens - face to face or a text message or an e-mail . . . there's always gonna be some kind of conversation there. I think it's gonna continue in the future. I actually expect history and historical stories to be more popular.

It's strange; there are several people that I've corresponded with throughout the course of my research who are older people who don't really do e-mail or have a cellphone, and I hand write letters to these people and get handwritten letters back. But on the other side, I'm friends with some 90-year-old World War II veterans on Facebook (laughs.) Some people are adapting, and I think that's great. As long as there's more sharing of information out there, it doesn't matter how it happens.